Patients now have access to a variety of methods for booking appointments with healthcare providers. Historically a patient would telephone a doctor's office and speak with a receptionist to request the next available appointment. After providing details concerning the reason for the visit, the receptionist would screen the request based on the receptionist's own experience and knowledge of office protocol, provider availability and required resources (e.g., procedure time, required lab tests, examination room and equipment) to determine the next available appointment time. Generally, the patient was given limited options to choose from (e.g., one or two appointment times).
Many patients now have the option to book healthcare appointments online via practice group websites. A practice group may include one or more healthcare providers affiliated with one another and operating from one or more office locations. The appointment booking options and ease of use (user experience) can vary widely on such websites.
Still further, a patient may utilize an aggregator website which offers appointments from a plurality of different unaffiliated practice groups in one centralized booking interface. These aggregator interfaces each have their own search parameters and required patient information for booking appointments.
Despite having multiple options, the patient (user) experience is not always improved. The increase in options has lead to multiple platforms with different booking requirements, formats and procedures that increase the complexity and burden of maintaining up-to-date appointment records and patient information. Many patients have multiple healthcare providers, and those providers may be dispersed across numerous unaffiliated practice groups. If a patient relocates (changes residence), not only does his patient contact information change, but likely all of his provider information changes, as well. If a patient changes jobs, or if his employer adopts a new healthcare plan, the patient's insurance information will change and he will be required to update all of his providers across multiple platforms. Even without changes in residence, employment, or insurance plans, a patient's medical history is a multi-faceted and continually changing data set, e.g., in terms of age, physical condition, medications and injuries. Thus, at any point in time a patient is unlikely to even know what specific information he has provided to any one of his various healthcare providers.
There is thus an ongoing need for improved access to healthcare appointment availability data and for management of patient healthcare data across multiple platforms.